during the ten years which elapsed from 1875, when I first saw him, till
his last illness in 1885. Many of them are merely brief notes, giving me
information or advice about my work as Hon. Sec. of the Victoria Street
Society, of which he was President. But many are long and interesting
letters. The editor of his excellent Biography probably did not know I
possessed these letters, nor did I know he was preparing Lord
Shaftesbury’s _Life_ or I should have placed them at his disposal. I can
only here quote a few as characteristic, or otherwise specially
interesting to me.
“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“September 3rd, 1878.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Your letter is very cheering. We were right to make the experiment.
We were right to test the man and the law: Cross, and his
administration of it. Both have failed us, and we are bound in duty, I
think, to leap over all limitations, and go in for the total abolition
of this vile and cruel form of Idolatry; for idolatry it is, and, like
all idolatry, brutal, degrading, and deceptive....
“May God prosper us! These ill-used and tortured animals are as much
His Creatures as we are, and to say the truth, I had, in some
instances, rather be the animal tortured than the man who tortured it.
I should believe myself to have higher hopes, and a happier future.
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
“July 10th, 1879.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have sent your letter to Judas of X——. I find no fault in it, but
that of too much courtesy to one so lost to every consideration of
feeling and truth.
“Did you know him, as I know him, you would find it difficult to
restrain your pen and your tongue.”...
* * * * *
“Some good will come out of the discussion.
“I have unmistakable evidence that many were deeply impressed, but
adhesion to political leaders is a higher law with most Politicians
than obedience to the law of truth.
“What do you think now of the Doctrine of ‘Apostolic Succession’?
“Would St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John have made such a speech as
that of my Lord of P——?
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“September 16th, 1879.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“You do that Bishop too much honour. He is not worth notice.
“It is frightful to see that the open champions of Vivisection are not
Bradlaugh and Mrs. B. but Bishops, ‘_Fathers in God_,’ and ‘Pastors’
of the People!
“We shall soon have Bradlaugh and his company claiming the Apostolical
Succession; and if that succession be founded on truth, mercy, and
love, with as good a right as Dr. G., Dr. M. or D.D. anything else.
“Your letter has crushed (if such a hard substance can be crushed) his
Lordship of C....
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
The next letter is in acknowledgment of the following verses which I had
sent to him on his Eightieth Birthday. They were repeated by the late
Chamberlain of the City of London, Sir Benjamin Scott, in his oration on
the presentation of the Freedom of the City to Lord Shaftesbury. I print
the letter, (though all too kind in its expression about my poor
verses,) on account of the deeply interesting review of his own life
which it contains:—
A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS
TO ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.
APRIL 28TH, 1881.
For eighty years! Many will count them over,
But none save He who knoweth all may guess
What those long years have held of high endeavour,
Of world-wide blessing and of blessedness.
For eighty years the champion of the right
Of hapless child neglected and forlorn;
Of maniac dungeon’d in his double night;
Of woman overtasked and labour-worn;
Of homeless boy in streets with peril rife;
Of workman sickening in his airless den;
Of Indian parching for the streams of life,
Of Negro slave in bonds of cruel men;
O! Friend of all the friendless ‘neath the sun,
Whose hand hath wiped away a thousand tears,
Whose fervent lips and clear strong brain have done
God’s holy service, lo! these eighty years,—
How meet it seems thy grand and vigorous age
Should find beyond man’s race fresh pangs to spare
And for the wrong’d and tortured brutes engage
In yet fresh labours and ungrudging care!
O tarry long amongst us! Live, we pray,
Hasten not yet to hear thy Lord’s “Well done!”
Let this world still seem better while it may
Contain one soul like thine amid its throng.
Whilst thou art here our inmost hearts confess,
Truth spake the kingly Seer of old who said—
“Found in the way of God and righteousness,
A crown of glory is the hoary head.”
“Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C.
“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“April 30th, 1881.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Had I not known your handwriting, I should never have guessed, either
that you were the writer of the verses, or that I was the subject of
them.
“Had I judged them simply by their ability and force, I might have
ascribed them to the true Author; but it required the envelope, and
the ominous word ‘eighty,’ to justify me in applying them to myself.
“They both touched and gratified me, but I will tell you the origin of
my public career, which you have been so kind as to commend. It arose
while I was a boy at Harrow School, about, I should think, fourteen
years of age—an event occurred (the details of which I may give you
some other day), which brought painfully before me the scorn and
neglect manifested towards the Poor and helpless. I was deeply
affected; but, for many years afterwards, I acted only on feeling and
sentiment. As I advanced in life, all this grew up to a sense of duty;
and I was convinced that God had called me to devote whatever
advantages He might have bestowed upon me, to the cause of the weak,
the helpless, both man and beast, and those who had none to help them.
“I entered Parliament in 1826, and I commenced operations in 1828,
with an effort to ameliorate the conditions of lunatics, and then I
passed on in a succession of attempts to grapple with other evils, and
such has been my trade for more than half a century.
“Do not think for a moment that I claim any merit. If there be any
doctrine that I dislike and fear more than another, it is the
‘Doctrine of Works.’ Whatever I have done has been given to me; what I
have done I was enabled to do; and all happy results (if any there be)
must be credited, not to the servant, but to the great Master, who led
and sustained him.
“My course, however, has raised up for me many enemies, and very few
friends, but among those friends I hope that you may be numbered.
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
I sent him another little _souvenir_ two years later:—
TO LORD SHAFTESBURY ON HIS 82ND BIRTHDAY.
WITH A CHINA TABLET.
The Lord of Rome, historians say,
Lamented he had “lost a day,”
When no good deed was done.
Scarce one such day, methinks, appears
In the long record of the years
Of England’s worthier son.
If on this tablet’s surface light
His hourly toils should Shaftesbury write
All may be soon effaced:
But in our grateful memories graven
And in the registers of Heaven
They will not be erased.
_London, April 28th, 1883._
The next letter refers to my Lectures on the _Duties of Women_ which I
had just delivered.
“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 14th, 1880.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“... I admire your Lectures. But do you not try to make, ‘the sex’ a
little too pugnacious? And why do you give ‘truth’ to the men, and
deny it to the women?
“If you mean by ‘truth’ abstinence from fibs, I think that the females
are as good as the males. But if you mean steadiness of friendship,
adherence to principles, conscientiously not superficially
entertained, and sincerity in a good cause, why, the women are far
superior.
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 21st, 1880.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“... Your lecture on Vivisection was admirable—we must be ‘mealy
mouthed’ no longer.
“Shall you and I have a conversation on your lectures and the ‘Duties
of Women’? We shall not, I believe, have much difference of opinion;
perhaps none. I approve them heartily, but there are one or two
expressions which, though intelligible to myself, would be greatly
misconstrued by a certain portion of Englishmen.
“I could give you instances by the hundred of the wonderful success
that, by a merciful Providence, has followed with our Ragged children,
male and female.[27] In fact, though after long intervals we have lost
sight of a good many, we have very few cases, indeed, of the failure
of our hopes and efforts.
“In thirty years we took off the streets of London, and sent to
service, or provided with means of honest livelihood more than two
hundred and twenty thousand ‘waifs and strays.’
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
“July 23rd, 1880.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have had a very friendly letter from Gladstone; but on reference to
him for permission to publish it, he seems unwilling to assent.
“Our testimony, thank God, is cumulative for good. We may hope, and we
must pray, for better things.
“I send you Gladstone’s letter. Pray return it to me, and take care
that it does not appear in print.[28]
“I am glad that you liked the ‘Dinner.’ It was, I think, a success in
showing civility to foreign friends.
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
Lord Shaftesbury made the following remarks about the Future State of
Animals, in a very sympathizing reply to a letter I had written to him
in which I mentioned to him that my dog had died:—
“September 29th, 1883.
“I have ever believed in a happy future for animals; I cannot say or
conjecture how or where; but sure I am that the love, so manifested,
by dogs especially, is an emanation from the Divine essence, and, as
such, it can, or rather it _will_ never be extinguished.”[29]
“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 14th, 1885.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“You must not suppose that because I did not answer your letter, at
the moment, I am indifferent to you or your correspondence.
“Far from it, but when I have little to do, being almost confined to
the house, I have much to write, and to get through my work, I must
frequently be relieved by a recumbent posture.
“Nevertheless, by God’s mercy, I am certainly better; and I think that
were we blessed with some warm, genial, weather, I should recover more
rapidly.
“Bryan[30] is a good man, he is able, diligent, zealous and has an
excellent judgment. I have not been able to attend his Committee, but
his reports to me show attention and good sense.
“I have left, as perhaps you have seen, the Lunacy Commission. It was
at the close of 56 years of service that I did so. I dare say that you
have had time to read my letter of resignation in the _Times_ of the
8th.
“I am very glad that Miss Lloyd is determined to print those lines.
They are very beautiful; and you must be sure to send a copy to Miss
Marsh. She admires them as much as I do.
“The thought of Calvary[31] is the strength that has governed all the
sentiments and actions of my manhood and later life; and you can well
believe that I greatly rejoice to find that one, whom I prize so
highly, has kindred sympathies....
“May God prosper you.
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
The most remarkable woman I have known, not excepting Mrs. Somerville
(described in my chapter on Italy), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs.
Beecher Stowe, was, beyond any doubt or question, my dear friend, Fanny
Kemble. I have told of the droll circumstances of our first meeting at
Newbridge in the early Fifties. From that time till her death in 1892,
her brilliant, iridescent genius, her wit, her spirit, her tenderness,
the immense “go” and momentum of her whole nature, were sources of
endless pleasure to me. When I was lame, I used to feel that for days
after talking with her I could almost dispense with my crutches, so much
did she, literally, lift me up!
Mrs. Kemble paid us several visits here in Wales, and was perhaps even
more delightful in our quiet country quarters than in London. She would
sit out for many hours at a time in our beautiful old garden, which she
said was to her “an idyll;” and talk of all things in heaven and earth;
touching in turn every note in the gamut of emotion from sorrowful to
joyous. One summer she came to us early, and thus sat daily under a
great cherry tree “in the midst of the garden,” which was at the time a
mass of odorous and snowy blossoms. Alas! the blossoms have returned and
are blooming as I write;—but the friend sleeps under the sod in Kensal
Green.
Mr. Henry James’ obituary article and Mr. Bentley’s generous-hearted
letter concerning her in the _Times_—in rebuke of the mean and grudging
notice of her which that paper had published,—seem to me to have been by
far the most truthful sketches which appeared of the “grand old
lioness;” as Thackeray called her. Everybody could admire, and most
people a little feared her; but it needed to come very close to her and
brush past her formidable thorns of irony and sarcasm, to know and
_love_ her, as she most truly deserved to be loved.
There is always something startling and perhaps the reverse of
attractive to those of us who have been brought up in the usual English
way to _repress_ our emotions, in women who have been trained reversely
by histrionic life, to give all possible outwardness and vividness of
expression to those same emotions. It is only when we get below both the
extreme demonstrativeness on one hand, and the conventional reserve and
self-restraint on the other, and meet on common ground of deep
sympathies, that real friendship is established; a friendship which in
my case was at once an honour and a delight.
Mrs. Kemble in her generous affection made a present to me of the MSS.
of her Memoirs, which subsequently I induced her to take back, and
publish herself, as her “_Old Woman’s Gossip_,” her _Records of a
Girlhood_ and _Records of Later Life_. Beside these, which, as I have
said, I returned to her one after another, she gave me, and I still
possess, an immense packet of her own old letters to her beloved H. S.
(Harriet St. Leger) and others; and the materials of five large and
thick volumes of autograph letters addressed to her, extending over more
than 50 years. They include whole correspondences with W. Donne, Edward
Fitzgerald, Henry Greville, Mrs. Jameson, John Mitchell Kemble, George
Combe, and several others; and besides these there are either one or
half-a-dozen letters from almost every man and woman of eminence in
England in her time. Mr. Bentley has very liberally purchased from me
for publication about 100 letters from Edward Fitzgerald to Mrs. Kemble.
The rest of the Mrs. Kemble’s correspondence I have, as I have
mentioned, bound together in five volumes, and I do not intend to
publish them. Had any of Mrs. Kemble’s “_Records_” remained inedited at
the time of her death I should have undertaken, (as she no doubt
intended me to do) the task of writing her biography. The work was,
however, so fully done by herself in her long series of volumes that
there was neither need nor room for more. I am happy to add, in
conclusion, that in the arrangements I have made regarding my dear old
friend’s literary remains, I have the consent and approval of her
daughters.
I knew Mrs. Gaskell a little, but not enough to harmonize in my mind the
woman I saw in the flesh with the books I liked so well as _Mary Barton_
and _Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras_. Of Mrs. Stowe’s delightful conversation
on the terrace of our villa on Bellosguardo, I have written my
recollections, and recorded the glimpses I had of Mrs. Browning. I have
also described Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur; our sculptor and painter
friends, from the latter of whom I have just (1898) received the kindest
letters and her impressive photograph; and Mary Carpenter, my leader and
fellow-worker at Bristol. I must not speak here of the affection and
admiration I entertain for my dear, living friend Anna Swanwick, the
translator of Æschylus and Faust; and for Louisa Lee Schuyler, one of
the leaders in the organization of relief in the great Civil War of
America and who founded and carried to its present marvellous extent of
power and usefulness the _State Charities Aid Association_ of New York.
Again, I have known in England Mdme. Bodichon (who furnished Girton with
its first thousand pounds); Mrs. Josephine Butler; Mrs. Webster the
classic poetess; and Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, another poetess and very
beautiful woman at whose house I once witnessed an interesting scene,—a
large party of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the attire of Athenians
of the Periclean age. Miss Swanwick and I, who were alone permitted to
attend in English costume, were immensely impressed by the _ennobling_
effect of the classic dress, not only on young and graceful people, but
on those who were quite the reverse.
I never saw Harriet Martineau; but was so desirous of doing it that I
intended to make a journey to Ambleside for the purpose, and with that
view begged our mutual friend, the late Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood, to ask
leave to introduce me to her. It was an unfortunate moment, and I only
received the following kind message:—
“I need not say how happy I should have been to become acquainted with
Miss Cobbe; but the time is past and I am only fit for old friends who
can excuse my shortcomings. I have lost ground so much of late that
the case is clear. I must give up all hopes of so great a pleasure.
Will you say this to her and ask her to receive my kind and thankful
regards, I venture to send on the grounds of our common friendships?”
Of my living, beloved and honoured friends, Mrs. William Grey, Lady
Mount-Temple, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Caroline Stephen, Miss
Julia Wedgwood, Lady Battersea, and Miss Florence Davenport Hill, I must
not here speak. I have had the pleasure also of meeting that very fine
woman-worker Miss Octavia Hill.
George Eliot I did not know, nor, as I have just said, did I ever meet
Harriet Martineau. But with those two great exceptions I think I may
boast of having come into contact with nearly all the more gifted
Englishwomen of the Victorian era; and thus when I speak, as I shall do
in the next chapter, of my efforts to put the claims of my sex fairly
before the world, I may boast of writing with practical personal
knowledge of what women are and can be, both as to character and
ability.
The decade which began in 1880 brought me many sorrows. The first was
the death of my second brother, Thomas Cobbe, of Easton Lyss. I loved
him much for his own sweet and affectionate nature; and much, too, for
the love of our mother which he shared especially with me. I was also
warmly attached to his beautiful and good Scotch wife, who survived him
only a few years; and to his dear children, who were my pets in infancy
and have been almost like my own daughters ever since. My brother ought
to have been a very successful and brilliant barrister, but his life was
broken by the faults of others, and when in advanced years he wrote,
with immense patience and research, a really valuable _History of the
Norman Kings_ (thought to be so by such competent judges as Mr. William
Longman, and the Historical Society of Normandy, which asked leave to
translate it), the book was practically _killed_ by a cruel and most
unfair review which attributed to him mistakes which he had not made,
and refused to publish his refutation of the charge. If this review were
written (as we could not but surmise) by an eminent historian, now dead,
whose own book my brother had, very unwisely, ignored, I can only say it
was a malicious and spiteful deed. My brother’s ambition was not strong
enough to carry him over such a disappointment, and he never attempted
to write again for the press, but spent his later years in the solitary
study of his favourite old chronicles and his Shakespeare. A little
later my eldest brother also died, leaving no children. I must be
thankful at my age that the youngest, the Rector of Maulden, though five
years older than I, still survives in health and vigour, rejoicing in
his happy home and family of affectionate daughters. I trust yet to
welcome him into the brotherhood of the pen when his great monograph on
LUTON CHURCH, HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE, sees the light this year.
I lost also in this same decade, my earliest friend Harriet St. Leger;
and a younger, very dear one, Emily Shaen. Mrs. Shaen and her admirable
husband had been much drawn to me by religious sympathies; and I
regarded her with more heartfelt respect, I might say reverence, than I
can well express. She endured twenty years of seclusion and suffering,
with the spirit at once of a saint and of a philosopher. Had her health
enabled her to take her natural place in the world, I have always felt
assured she would have been recognised as one of the ablest as well as
one of the best women of the day, and more than the equal of her two
gifted sisters; Catharine and Susanna Winkworth. The friendship between
us was of the closest kind. I often said that I _went to church_ to her
sick-room. In her last days, when utterly crushed by incessant suffering
and by the death of her beloved husband and her favourite son, she bore
in whispers, to me, (she could scarcely speak for mortal weakness,) this
testimony to our common faith: “I sent for you,—to tell you,—_I am more
sure than ever that God is Good_.”
All these deaths and the heart-wearing Anti-vivisection work combined
with my own increasing years to make my life in London less and less a
source of enjoyment and more of strain than I could bear. In 1884 Miss
Lloyd, with my entire concurrence, let our dear little house in Hereford
Square to our friend, Mrs. Kemble, and we left London altogether and
came to live in Wales.
CHAPTER
XIX.
_CLAIMS OF WOMEN._
It was not till I was actively engaged in the work of Mary Carpenter at
Bristol, and had begun to desire earnestly various changes of law
relating to young criminals and paupers, that I became an advocate of
“Women’s Rights.” It was good old Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New
York, who, when paying us a visit, pressed on my attention the question:
“_Why should you not have a vote?_ Why should not women be enabled to
influence the making of the laws in which they have as great an interest
as men?”
My experience probably explains largely the indifference of thousands of
women, not deficient in intelligence, in England and America to the
possession of political rights. They have much anxiety to fulfil their
home duties, and the notion of undertaking others, requiring (as they
fully understand) conscientious enquiry and reflection, rather alarms
than attracts them. But the time comes to every woman worth her salt to
take ardent interest in some question which touches legislation. Then
she begins to ask herself, as Mr. May asked me; “Why should the fact of
being a woman, close to me the use of the plain, direct means, of
helping to achieve some large public good or stopping some evil?” The
timid, the indolent, the conventional will here retreat, and try to
believe that it concerns men only to right the wrongs of the world in
some more effectual way than by single-handed personal efforts in
special cases. Others again,—and of their number was I—become deeply
impressed with the need of woman’s voice in public affairs, and
thenceforth attach themselves to the “Woman’s Cause” more or less
earnestly. For my own part I confess I have been chiefly moved by
reflection on the sufferings and wrongs borne by women, in great measure
owing to the _deconsideration_ they endure consequent on their political
and civil disabilities. Whilst I and other happily circumstanced women,
have had no immediate wrongs of our own to gall us, we should still have
been very poor creatures had we not felt bitterly those of our less
fortunate sisters, the robbed and trampled wives, the mothers whose
children were torn from them at the bidding of a dead or living father,
the daughters kept in ignorance and poverty while their brothers were
educated in costly schools and fitted for honourable professions. Such
wrongs as these have inspired me with the persistent resolution to do
everything in my power to protect the property, the persons and the
parental rights of women.